Today on a conference call with the Gingrich Faith Leaders Coalition that included guest speakers Jim Garlow and J.C. Watts, Newt Gingrich claimed that he will push for not only a federal marriage amendment to outlaw marriage equality but also a federal law to prohibit states from legalizing same-sex marriage. He claimed that states with marriage equality are contributing to legal “chaos” and said that “if we are going to defend marriage in the end it will probably require a federal law.” After a questioner asked whether same-sex marriage would lead to people seeking to marry dogs and cows, Gingrich, who on an earlier conference call described same-sex marriage as “paganism,” didn’t push back against the offensive comparison to bestiality but instead blamed the country’s teachers for why people are more accepting of such beliefs.

Question: I have a question regarding all the laws that people are trying to make for gay rights, I heard what you said about marriage being between a man and a woman and I agree, that’s what God said in the very beginning in the Book of Genesis, but the laws of our land are seeing more and more states allowing gay marriage. How can we stop this? It is so profoundly wrong.

Gingrich: I think ultimately we’re going to have to have a federal amendment because at the rate we’re going, you might be able to pass a federal law, but at the rate we’re going it’s going to be just chaos, you’re going to have some states that say it’s all right and other states that say it’s not all right, how are people going to travel, what are their legal rights, it is a mess. I think if we are going to defend marriage in the end it will probably require a federal law.

Question: What’s the difference, what they’re saying between a woman wants to be with a woman, when is it going to be ‘I want to marry a dog’ or ‘I want to marry a cow,’ that makes as much sense, what they are saying is doing something stupid like that.

Gingrich: I think that you have some people—remember we have now had a whole two generations of teachers who explained to us ‘you shouldn’t render moral judgment, after all it’s all situation ethics, who are we to decide,’ and that’s been a major problem.

Gingrich also maintained that he is “deeply offended” by President Obama’s apology over the burning of Qurans in Afghanistan while “he is attacking the Catholic Church,” and said that Obama’s statement is a clear definition of the “anti-Christian, anti-Jewish” ideology of the “modern secular left”:

Gingrich: I can’t tell you how deeply offended I am by Barack Obama who apologizes to Islam while he is attacking the Catholic Church, you couldn’t ask for a clearer definition of the modern secular left, which I think is anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, but always willing to be sympathetic to any organization which isn’t Christian or Jewish. I really think that is going to be a major theme of the campaign this Fall and it’s a debate I’m looking forward to because I don’t think Obama can defend himself.

He responded to the US Senate’s vote to table the Blunt Amendment and in doing so ensure that women have contraception coverage in their insurance plans by saying that the vote shows “how sick we’ve become” as a country and that the Democratic Party is “anti-religious” and “consolidating in its hostility to religion.” Gingrich accused Obama of trying to “wage war on every right to life organization in America” and intensify “how sick the country’s become.”

Garlow: Where is America, in our journey right now, in terms of radical secularism coming up, where are we as a nation right now? Where does it stand? And what can we do to turn this around?

Gingrich: You saw how sick we’ve become in a vote today in the U.S. Senate where on a party line vote 51 Democrats voted against allowing any exemptions for religious reasons for a government imposed-mandate on contraception and abortion. You couldn’t have a clearer statement. You now got this secular, anti-religious, leftwing party and it’s consolidating in its hostility to religion.

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Gingrich: Now to have got a president who is pro-infanticide wage war on every right to life organization in America whether they are Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox Jew, Greek Orthodox, you name it, just tells you how sick the country’s become. I think this is the most important election of our lifetime. I think if we get four more years of Obama, four more years of him picking Supreme Court justices, four more years of these kind of radical rules, we won’t be the country we were in 2008 in terms of our core values.